Nowadays Wiltshire Council chief executive Andrew Kerr is running an £800m budget but as a teenager he was running something very different – an athletics track as one of Britain’s Olympic hopefuls.

With less than a year to go until the London 2012 Olympics, Mr Kerr is leading the way in a search for Wiltshire volunteers to be torch bearers for the Olympic flame by dropping his own name into the nominations hat.

Wiltshire Council is on the look-out for up to 300 volunteers who will run a short distance with the flame next year as it travels along a route through the county. The details of that route remain top secret but the 52-year-old at the helm of the council is hoping to drum up interest in the international sporting event now.

Mr Kerr, who lives in Neston, near Corsham, failed in his bid to become an Olympic athlete after illness ended his running career at the age of 24. In the 1970s he enjoyed a string of sporting successes, mastering the 400m races at Scottish, British and European levels. He has 17 Scottish titles to his name.

The father-of-three said: “I got into running because I was useless at football when I was 12. By the time I was 15 I had started putting on some muscle and I came second in the Scottish Schools competition in 1974. That was the first time I had had some success. Ever since that day I knew I liked winning and I still do.

“At 17 I came first in the National Scottish competitions in the 400m, breaking the 50-second barrier and going on to reach 49 for 400.”

Mr Kerr then went on to break the record for the British under 20s indoor 400m at 48.2 seconds and he won the outdoor competition too. In 1977 he then went on to sixth place in the finals of the European Junior Championships.

In a turn of events, Mr Kerr collapsed at the 1978 Commonwealth Games trials with glandular fever. He said: “I just wasn’t well enough to compete. I stopped when I was 24 because I seemed to develop a pattern of illness. I decided I needed a job so sadly I never made it into an Olympic team, even though I was good enough.”

Mr Kerr did enjoy some claim to fame, however, after featuring in the 1981 sporting film Chariots of Fire as a racing competitor to the characters Eric Liddell, played by Ian Charleson, and Harold Abrahams, played by Ben Cross. He said: “There was a scene where I was supposed to come second in the race but we just couldn’t get the scene right and had to keep shooting again. After 25 takes, the actors were of course knackered but as a runner I was fine.

“The Olympics are the greatest sporting event in the world and although I didn’t get there my passion for sport has given me an awful lots of things in my life. It is the reason that I am here at the top of my profession because it gives me drive and I respond well under pressure.

“Having performed in front of 40,000 people in my sporting career, it means doing presentations to large groups of people isn’t the nerve-wracking experience it could be. Of course I get nervous beforehand like anyone else but when they call my name, the nerves are forgotten.

“Even if you can’t be an Olympic athlete you can still be involved with the Olympics here in Wiltshire and I hope that people will feel inspired to be a part of it.”

Mr Kerr has embarked on a walking and swimming regime in a bid to get fit again, having put on two stone since taking the top post at Wiltshire Council in 2010. He hopes he will be one of the successful nominees to carry the torch through Wiltshire.

Nominations for Wiltshire torch bearers can be made online at www.lloydstsb.com/carrytheflame until September 12.